Doing it for themselves: how communities developed messages and communication methods for rinderpest eradication in southern Sudan (PLA 45)

After a period of prolonged vaccination against rinderpest in southern Sudan, it was decided to stop vaccinations to see how successful the programme had been. However, continued monitoring of animals was required to ensure no re-occurrence of the disease took place. This paper details the establishment of community based communication systems, and the lessons learnt from this process.

This article was published in PLA 45: Community-based animal healthcare. This special issue looks at community-based animal health workers (CAHW) and the important role they have played, and could play in the future, in maintaining and improving livestock health in rural areas. Drawing on the experiences of various grassroots programmes across Africa and Asia, this collection of papers address many of the factors that hinder the use of CAHWs, like the lack of recognition within governments and problems with complex disease management, while also detailing the many advantages, like unparalleled access to communities and short training periods in comparison to formally trained veterinary doctors.

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA, formerly PLA Notes) is the world's leading series on participatory learning and action approaches and methods. PLA publishes articles on participation aimed at practitioners, researchers, academics and activists. All articles are peer-reviewed by an international editorial board. See: www.planotes.org.